Week 2 Blog

Week 2, Monday 16th-Wednesday 19th Of September 2013

Beginning with our second week, we had our second Acting Skills and Techniques lesson, which was the date our first homework was due in.  Our homework was to learn a monologue.  But it couldn't be any random monologue; the main point of this homework was for each of us to perform a monologue where the characteristics of the character giving the monologue in the script was to be  similar to our own characteristics in real life.  My monologue was from a TV Drama I had been watching since the previous year called 'A Touch Of Cloth'.  I chose this monologue as I had seen this program so many times and the monologue was similar to the language i would use in everyday life, and I had also performed it before in front of many people I commune with. As I performed this as practice, I realized that there were a lot of similarities in both the language given and the way of movement as I watched the real thing before, since they were sort of similar to my own movements.  But before we were all to volunteer to perform, our teacher gave 2 pieces of blank paper to each student in the class room and she instructed to review 2 students using both papers, just like I was to review two students after my own performance.  The purpose of this was to show what the students’ performance was like through an audience member’s point of view; as well as give each student understands of performance techniques.

Our second lesson of singing had us handing in a second piece of homework given on the previous week. This homework was to look at techniques of singing.  The purpose of this homework was for each student to come up or find a technique which allowed a singer’s vocals to be prepared before a singing performance.  For example, mine was very basic but it was to sing the words 'La La La La La' and the method was that you were to sing it in rising octaves, so the first time you sing it, you sing it in a deep note, and the next time a bit higher, and the vocals increase as you repeat the phrase.  This brings your vocals up so they're prepared for a performance with both deep and high notes.  Each student had to give their techniques amongst themselves in pairs, and then they were to share it with the whole class and the teacher after a few minutes introduction to said vocal warm up.

Our final lesson of the day was our second Art Industry lesson; these lessons allow us to take a look deeper into the industry of the art within Acting and Drama. For this lesson we were to focus on individual skill, skill which may help in understanding ourselves a little better, within this subject.  We listed many skills which we kept expanding endlessly, this clearly showed that we know what we are all capable of. 

On our second day, we had our lesson for The Development of Drama, where we were looking at the history of Acting and Dramatic Arts and where and when it originated. To start off, we looked at a documentary of its origins in Ancient Greece and it was showing how it became so popular and where the main three genres of performance came from and how they expanded.  This gave us all better knowledge of the history of  Acting and Dramatic Arts and it may be looked back on for future projects in this unit.

 

Our final lesson of the day in Movement was very much near the same as our first lesson, only this time we were given the task of learning a warm up strategy, which our teacher said should be done before the movement lesson begins. After we went through all the basic dance moves that we learnt on the previous week again, we ended our day.

The next day, was our second lesson of Physical Theatre. We pretty much spent the lesson working on stage movements and techniques similar to the ones we learnt last week. Again, same as the previous week, it was very basic and easy to grasp but the idea was to get a good understanding of an actor’s physicality on stage for when we get into different practical work for the weeks to come.

Week 1 Blog

Week 1, Monday 9th-Wednesday 11th Of September 2013

On our first day on Btec Level 2 Performing Arts, we began to know our classmates a little better  with some simple Drama games. These Drama games helped us work on strategies in which a Performing Arts student needed in order to work well with each other.  For example, team building was required in the game of muddled phrases; this helped us work together in order to make a phrase using separate words, this game helped us a lot into knowing our classmates names.  Alongside were games which had us warming up to be more energized for the lessons we had on the day. All these strategies were amongst some other simple drama games also, leading to a good introduction to the classmates in our course.

After our first lesson came an introduction to our Singing lessons.  Once again this was a simple lesson in which our teacher quizzed all of us in our knowledge and understanding of the music industry and if we had music be a big part in our lives. For me, I was new to music as i recently started listening to it more often than I did in the past and I thought that the timing was great seeing we had to be singing each week on a Monday.

On day two, it was our first Performing Arts Production Process, where we had a gathering as well as a meeting with all the Level 3 Performing Art’s students and our task was to read through the script of the end of term project.  Our end of term project was to work with the Level 3 students as they were to be performing a pantomime version of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and we were to be instructed and trained as the crew for the pantomime, but that will come in later weeks. We spent the whole lesson reading through the first written act of the productions script.  The purpose of this gathering with the Level 3 Performing Art's students was obviously to know the people we would be working with in the future, and also to understand the basics of our end of term project.

After a short break, we arrived to our final lesson of the day, Movement.  This lesson was to focus on our strategies with dance.  This first lesson was different to the previous introductory lesson we had; as we were used to games and quiz's, then to show on our own knowledge of both acting and singing.  Whereas with dance, the teacher went to the front of the class room where we could all see him, and began to show us some warm up exercises for the dance we were going to do in the lesson. After, he then began to show us some simple dance movements as we followed along with him. We did all this to show our teacher our potential in dance movement and also gave us an understanding of what was to come in the upcoming dancing lessons.

On day three, we began with our first Physical Theatre Performance lesson.  This lesson was both exciting as we started and interesting because the teacher indicated on how a real actor should stand on stage and become still, relaxed and focus eye sight dead ahead of yourself.  Then he introduced certain character movements on stage, such as a clown doing a tall comedic jog. This was helpful to us because for our upcoming assignment in Physical Theatre Performance, we had to act as a just turning 100 year old clown whom had finished his final performance on the Eve of the new year which was also his birthday.  After the character movements, we then went to look at still images. The purpose of this task was to look at all our classmates' imagination, as the teacher created a scenario and we had to give a still image of our characters reaction/expression to this scene. This task helped all of us in understanding the use of imagination with the scenario portrayed, as well as creativity with the creation of our characters and how this was to help us in performances later on.

At the end of our first week, I would like to say that we all learned something new with all the strategies and techniques revealed to us, giving us a better understanding in the Industry of Drama.